‘You know him, then?’
Johnson grimaced. ‘Is it possible not to know him? His views precede him like trumpets. I have met him, yes, but only once. When he comes to London he gets into company for which I have no liking, so our paths do not cross. Does he still make that journey on horseback?’
‘Oh, aye. All the way, and all the way back. He disdains a coach – a coach is a modern effeminacy to him.’
‘That is a mad prejudice against convenience, surely. To travel on horseback in the Highlands, where no coach could go, is a necessity, but to London … Well, anyway, we were talking of him yesterday at dinner, and of that belief of his you mentioned a minute ago, that if one invited an orang-outang to dinner it might be taught to converse also. This is a ridiculous notion in itself. I find it doubly worrying in one whose trade it is to rectify error.’
‘Lord Monboddo,’ answered Maclaurin, ‘if I understand him right, believes everything may be possible. That is, if we can imagine something, then it is not beyond comprehension, therefore it is possible for it to be.’
‘You defend him as Mr Crosbie defended him,’ said Johnson. ‘And I say to you what I said to Mr Crosbie – it is as possible that the orang-outang does not speak, as that he speaks. However, you have a point. I should have thought it not possible to find a Monboddo; yet he exists.’
Johnson went on to describe the tour Boswell and Principal Robertson had taken him on, around the Royal Infirmary, the abbey and palace of Holyrood, and the kirk of St Giles, which was divided within into four separate churches, each congregation having its own minister and a different degree of Presbyterian rigour according to its taste. Dr Robertson, Johnson said, had explained to him some of the enthusiasms still at large in the Church of Scotland, which he and the Moderate party sought to keep at bay; especially in the matter of patronage. Johnson, as a high Anglican, thoroughly approved of the right of landowners to appoint ministers to livings that they endowed, and to overrule the preference of congregations. This, however, was an unlucky topic: Maclaurin had cut his teeth as an advocate in the ecclesiastical courts of the General Assembly, held annually at St Giles’, and had always pleaded on behalf of the opposition. When Johnson made a remark about superstitious peasants voting to be harangued every Sabbath by bigoted maniacs, Maclaurin flushed with anger. ‘Just because the members o a congregation uphaud the richt to choose their ain minister disna mak them aw fanatics,’ he said loudly, and with deliberate Scots emphasis.
Across the room, Boswell, who had been cornered by his uncle, caught the rumble and hurried over anxiously to defuse the situation. But Johnson was equanimity itself.
‘Bozzy, Bozzy, this is your friend. I will not fight with a friend of yours, in spite of his warlike tones. A blockhead or a rogue is my enemy, but not a man of principle such as Mr Maclaurin.’
‘I am happy to hear you say it,’ said Boswell, shooting Maclaurin a warning glance.
‘Not tonight anyway,’ Johnson added. ‘I do not say I would not take up arms against him in other circumstances. It is not a good idea always to treat your opponent with respect. Others may think that a sign of weakness, that your deference implies an admission of the justness of his cause. Would you not agree, Mr Maclaurin?’
‘In some circumstances, aye,’ Maclaurin said, calming down. ‘Of course, as an advocate, one seldom pleads the causes closest to one’s heart.’
‘Very well said, sir. A lawyer has no business to have a heart. I go further: he has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes – he should be concerned only with the evidence, and its presentation, and leave the matter of justice to the judge and jury. However –’ he paused, as if mustering his thoughts on some previously postponed subject ‘– I did not mean principally the law. I was thinking of your good Dr Beattie, who has attacked Mr Hume for his attack on religion.’ He paused again: pay attention, gentlemen, I am going to pronounce. Boswell hushed the room. ‘Now some people have thought Dr Beattie rude to ridicule Hume, but I applaud him. When a man sets himself up as being so much cleverer than the rest of us, and than all ages before us, can he be surprised if another man comes and laughs at him?’
Maclaurin was looking bemused at this sudden change of subject. ‘We touched on this yesterday,’ Boswell explained.
‘There’s no much ye didna touch on, it seems,’ said Maclaurin.
‘But as I said to you then, sir,’ Boswell said to Johnson, ‘it is impossible not to like Hume, in spite of what he has written. He is much better than his books.’
‘You see?’ Johnson said to Maclaurin. ‘My point exactly. Bozzy, by his weakness for Mr Hume’s company, and for fear of causing him offence, half surrenders to him. Whereas, if Mr Hume is the great man he thinks himself, we may deride his opinions all day and it will be like throwing peas against a rock. So there is not the slightest need to be polite with him. I wonder,’ he said, ‘whether it is Hume’s being a blockhead that makes him a rogue, or his being a rogue that makes him a blockhead.’
‘Oh, I must protest,’ said Boswell. ‘He is neither. I know him well.’
‘We all do,’ said Lord Hailes, but Johnson surged on as if he had not heard.
‘Another fact endears Dr Beattie to me, and diminishes Mr Hume. It is a remark Hume makes in one of his essays about Negroes being naturally inferior to white men. They have never, he declares – not ever in the course of time – produced a single man of ingenuity or invention! And not just Negroes, but yellow and brown men, men of all other shades. You wonder if Mr Hume has ever heard of China. He says he has heard of a black man whose learning is highly spoken of, but thinks it likely this poor fellow has acquired a few simple accomplishments and can repeat them like a parrot. He means, I believe, a Mr Francis Williams, a Latin scholar and poet of note, who was educated at Cambridge. Does this mean that all men educated at Cambridge are mimicking parakeets? No, apparently only the coloured ones. And this, gentlemen, is your worthy and intelligent David Hume. Dr Beattie quite rightly deplores his offensive and ill-founded opinions.’
‘Even supposing it to be an error of judgment,’ said Hailes, ‘that opinion, that footnote as I recall it, is, I think, twenty years old or more.’
‘That is no excuse, sir, since Mr Hume declared his genius long before that, and inserted the footnote in later editions. He draws his conclusions from hearsay and an abhorrence of blackness, which in any man of sense is an ignorant way of going about things – in a philosopher it is inexcusable. Boswell will support me against such ignorance, won’t you, James? He knows my man Francis Barber – my freely engaged and paid servant, I should say – who is as black as that cat in the window, and than whom a nobler and more civilised white man does not exist. Oh, but I forgot. Boswell is an enthusiast for slavery.’
Boswell tried to protest. ‘This is unfair, sir. You know my regard for Mr Barber.’
‘But not for his fellows,’ Johnson said with glee. ‘You see, gentlemen, while I celebrated Lord Mansfield’s recent decision in favour of Somerset the slave, I believe my friend here was disturbed by it. It seemed to him to presage disaster for our empire. How does Scotland read it, gentlemen?’
There was an awkward silence. The previous year, England’s Lord Chief Justice had ruled that a Virginia planter who had brought a slave into the country did not have the right to take him away again against his will. Johnson frowned at the lack of response.
‘You have considered it, surely? Lord Mansfield is one of you, or once was. We got him young, I admit, and made something of him, but he is still a Scotchman. His judgment must interest you for that reason, if no other.’
Maclaurin, who was looking particularly uncomfortable, coughed. ‘A similar case arose here a few years ago,’ he said. ‘It was due to come before the Court of Session but it did not, because the slave’s master died, and so the issue was not resolved.’
Hailes said, ‘There was an even earlier case, in the fifties. But on that occasion, the slave died during
the process.’
‘I see,’ Johnson said. ‘So you ought to have made your own judgment by now, but death has cheated you twice? How disappointing.’
‘There will be a third time, I hae nae doubt,’ said Maclaurin. ‘And when it comes, I hope we will be as bold for liberty as the court in England.’
Hailes agreed. ‘It is only a matter of time.’
‘I am very glad to hear it,’ Johnson said, smiling. ‘And, Mr Maclaurin – I share your hope. But if you read Mansfield’s judgment carefully, you will find it is not so much for liberty, as for the man Somerset. It does not say slavery is illegal, only that Somerset, now he is in England, cannot be compelled by his master to go back to Virginia. The effect is that Somerset, by being on English soil, has become free, but Lord Mansfield has not freed all slaves in England, let alone in the colonies. He is very specific on this point.’
‘It’s true enough,’ Hailes said. ‘He found it a very tricky issue. Somebody told me he rather hoped the case would go away, as ours did, because so much is at stake.’
‘So much money is at stake, you mean,’ Johnson said.
‘I suppose that’s what he had in mind,’ Hailes said.
Boswell’s uncle, looking permanently startled at the mighty intellects he found himself among, had been fluttering at the edges of this discussion for a minute or two. Now, unexpectedly, he spoke. ‘Lord Mansfield, of course, has a slave of his own.’
Everybody stared at him. Dr Boswell seemed more surprised that he had been in possession of this information than the others were that he had released it. James came to his uncle’s rescue. ‘That is true, very true, I’d forgotten it. A domestic servant, I believe. But was she not the natural child of a relative of his lordship’s? Something makes me think she was.’
‘I could not say,’ Dr Boswell said softly.
‘Yes, a captain in the navy or something. And Mansfield took her into his own household when she was very young. Quite admirable, really.’
‘But still, she is a slave, is she?’ Maclaurin asked.
‘I doubt she is kept in chains,’ James Boswell said tersely.
‘But perhaps if she is not free,’ said his uncle, ‘her being in the house might affect Lord Mansfield’s, ah, judgment. That is all I meant.’ As if this contribution had been altogether too much for him, Dr Boswell slid away again towards the door.
‘This person I was talking to,’ Lord Hailes said, ‘did say that Mansfield was quite upset at having to reach a decision at all! Apparently he remarked that – now, let me get this right – that he would have all masters think their Negroes free, and all Negroes think themselves not, and then both would behave a great deal better.’
‘Did Mansfield really say that?’ Boswell asked.
‘That’s what I understand. It is a touch disingenuous, but …’
‘But masterful,’ Boswell said. ‘Poor law but very practical.’
Maclaurin sniffed. ‘I see now how his lordship rose to such eminence in England. He abandoned all principle and became a sophist.’
‘Now, John, are we so much more principled here? We like sugar quite as much as the English.’
Johnson was looking very pleased with himself – like a man who had put a cat in a doocot. ‘Well, well, we shall see, won’t we? When this matter next comes before the Scottish courts, your liking for principle, Mr Maclaurin, for getting to the root of the matter, may serve you well.’
Maclaurin was about to rise to this jibe, but Johnson reached out and touched his arm lightly. ‘I am serious, sir. I do not make fun of you. Let not your justice be dashed on the rock of expediency.’
Later, riding home to Dreghorn through the warm evening with the carriage window closed tight and his collar turned up, Maclaurin thought back over the last few hours. He’d be able to amuse Esther in the morning with details of Dr Johnson’s bear-like qualities, his coarseness, his taste, his intelligence, his stupidity. The dislike of Hume, for instance, on account of his lack of religion, seemed to Maclaurin to display a narrowness of mind, an intolerance, which Johnson would have been the first to condemn in a Scotsman. How did Johnson reconcile the fact that men of faith whom he admired, such as Principal William Robertson, were also great friends of the infidel Hume? Or that Boswell, of whom he was so fond, was fond of Hume? All who actually knew Hume – as a man rather than as a demon – were fond of him: a more affable, charming, easy and entertaining companion it was impossible to imagine. He was now living off St Andrew Square in comfortable but somewhat slipshod circumstances, looked after by a housekeeper whom some said was his bide-in lover and others – on no better evidence than her rather masculine features – a man in disguise. As conversant with his cat as with old friends, and indulging his latest passion for the art of cookery, Hume was growing ever fatter and ever more relaxed about the prospect of not going to heaven when he died. Not going anywhere, in fact.
Johnson, it seemed, had latched on to a few of Hume’s less intelligent remarks and made mountains out of them. The footnote about Negroes was silly and inexcusable, Maclaurin conceded. But elsewhere in his writings – he could not think where – he felt sure that Hume took as firm a stand against slavery as Johnson, or as his friend Adam Smith. ‘Cruel and oppressive’, surely he used some such phrase? And James Beattie up in Aberdeen might be a more staunch, more vociferous opponent of slavery, but, compared with Hume, he was not very bright.
Then again, Maclaurin thought, intelligence and political rectitude were not the same thing. Indeed, sometimes the former kicked hardest against the latter if it was imposed by stupid though well-intentioned people.
The hackney rattled on along the Colinton road. Maclaurin confessed to himself, as the lights of the city fell away, that these thoughts were not prompted by Johnson’s conversation alone. He shuddered, feeling again the chill of embarrassment that had risen in him when he had mentioned the Scottish case, ‘similar’ to Somerset’s, that had come to nothing. He had been involved in that case, and had felt bad about it ever since, because he had been on the wrong side.
Of course, an advocate could not be ‘on the wrong side’. A lawyer has no business to have a heart, as Johnson had said. There was the difficulty. Maclaurin had taken the case – it was unprofessional, unheard of, for an advocate to decline business when approached by a solicitor, unless he had a personal interest in it – and then had discovered, too late, that he did indeed have a heart. He had been retained by the master, a doctor in Fife, to plead against his slave’s bid for freedom. This slave, Davie Spens – he had taken the surname of the minister of Wemyss who had baptised him – had deserted the doctor after acquiring Christianity, and settled on a farm where he had got work and lodging. The doctor had wanted to send him back to the Indies and sell him to some planter.
The case was to have been heard in the Court of Session. It had seemed a straightforward case of rights in property. But the more Maclaurin had gathered information for the memorial he was to submit to the court, the less he had liked what he was doing. The arguments and authorities were strong and plentiful enough, but morally how could he prepare such material knowing that, if he won the case, he would be condemning a man who had tasted liberty to lifelong bondage? Maclaurin had had a few sleepless nights, torn between his duty as a lawyer and his feelings as a human being. It had been an immense relief to him when the doctor suddenly died and the case against Spens was dropped.
That had been only three and a half years ago. At least Maclaurin knew now where he would stand when the issue next came before the law. He remembered the shame he had felt on learning that a fund for Spens’s defence had been set up among the colliers and salters of Wemyss parish, and that his lawyers had waived their fees. The Scottish colliers and salters, even now, were little better than slaves themselves, bound for life to the owner of the land on which they lived and worked – although they at least earned wages and had certain privileges in exchange for their perpetual serfdom and dismal labours underground. Neverthe
less, their action – and that of the lawyers – had been most creditable, something Maclaurin could not now think of his own.
Yet he had had no choice, as an advocate. Men of law developed hard shells that enabled them to behave professionally, argue against their own instincts – fight to ruin a man’s livelihood or reputation then go home to cuddle their bairns at night. Maclaurin was no better or worse than Boswell or Cullen or any of the others.
Johnson had addressed him as ‘a man of principle’. But was he? He was for liberty but had pleaded – or would have – on behalf of a slave’s master. He had argued for Christians to be able to choose their own pastors, but Maclaurin, a Presbyterian in so many other ways, did not really believe in God. When he thought of David Hume, his equanimity in considering death, he envied him. He envied him because he himself thought the same way, but somehow his intellect could not quite stretch to the utter freedom from fear that Hume enjoyed. Once or twice he had tried out his thoughts about this on Boswell and Crosbie: ‘Surely we have no reason to expect a future state. It is a beautiful fancy, but what right has man to it?’ Neither of his friends had been capable of discussing the matter coherently: Bozzy because, lowping back and forth between clap-ridden whores and the arms of religion, he was too anxious about his own state of sin; and Crosbie because he was too drunk.
The hackney was approaching the gates of Dreghorn. It was still dry and warm, and a large moon lightened the evening. Maclaurin decided to risk a few hundred yards in his own grounds. His coat would deliver him from evil. He rapped on the roof. ‘I’ll walk frae here.’ He got out, paid the driver, and saw the carriage turn and head back towards the city. He stood still, breathed in – but not too deep – the fresh, silent air. An owl hooted.
He began to walk towards the house. He thought of Esther sleeping; his four living children, soon to be joined by another. Would it survive? God willing, some would say. Maclaurin held that phrase to be pure cant. It angered him that a supposedly benevolent God could have willingly taken three innocent bairns from them. What possible purpose, let alone benevolence, could there be in that?
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